Aftermath of 3-1 win: Yeo accuses Sharks of embellishing, Couture blames his sense of visor style for puck to face

SAN JOSE — During their four-game losing streak, the Sharks were a weak 1-for-13 on the power play and twice coughed up two-goal leads.

Thursday night, they were 3-for-7 on the power play and watched their two-goal lead grow into a three-goal lead, beating the Minnesota Wild by the same 3-1 score that they lost to them on Sunday night in frigid St. Paul.

All that’s pretty much covered in the print edition story available online here .

But the post-game attention was really on the Wild side, where Coach Mike Yeo accused the Sharks of embellishing, singling out Brad Stuart in particular on the first penalty — a high-sticking call against Justin Fontaine — that led to San Jose’s initial goal.

“It must be nice to draw penalties like that,” Yeo said. “The other team goes stick on puck and you just kind of hold your head. Make sure you look at the first penalty. Because to me, that’s embarrassing. I don’t know. I guess we’ve got to ask our players to embellish more.”

Later, asked if he thought his team’s play at even strength had improved, Yeo went back to the same topic.

“This is why I’m pissed off,” he said. “Because our guys battled hard tonight. We didn’t do enough, there’s no question. We were obviously in the box too much and we didn’t finish well enough. The penalty kill we can’t — it doesn’t matter how many times they dive, we’ve got to make sure we kill them off – or embellish, I shouldn’t say just dive.”

Strangely, he didn’t even bring up the phantom call against the Wild, the four-minute double minor to Zenon Konopka for high-sticking Jason Demers when it was Freddie Hamilton’s stick that did the damage. Oh well.

****Logan Couture hit the ice hard in the third period after being struck in the face by Marc-Edouard Vlasic’s shot. Then it looked as if he might have hurt himself even more by pounding the ice with his gloved hand in frustration.

Couture went back to the locker room for repairs, then returned.

“It was just knuckling,” he said of the puck that struck him. “Me being stupid — I wear my visor up a little, a little high. That had something to do with it.”

****Strictly a travel day for the Sharks. I take to the skies, too.

But there were things bigger picture that I thought we were much better with.

David Pollak

David Pollak has been following the NHL forever and at the Mercury News as an editor or reporter since 1987. For almost a decade he wrote about the Sharks as the paper's Fan in the Stands before joining the sports department in 2001. He became the Sharks beat writer before the 2007-08 season and began this blog at that time. You can also follow him on Twitter at @PollakOnSharks.